Although much of the Beacon related PR at the moment is centred around the availability of the Bluetooth SIG Mesh there are other mesh solutions some of which were referenced in our previous post.
Two other mesh solutions that are catching our eye at the moment are Wirepas and Fruitymesh because they provide more at the application level.
Wirepas provides for remote monitoring and configuration of beacons allowing you to set things such as advertisement interval, transmit power, used channels and the beacon payload. It also allows monitoring of beacon battery levels and firmware update. The mesh supports enhanced beacon security to protect against beacon spoofing and piggybacking.
Fruitymesh is open source software provided by M-Way Solutions GmbH in Germany. It allows you to configure beacon advertising, set up Bluetooth scanning, perform I/O and report beacon status, all via the mesh.
What sets these two solutions apart from the Bluetooth SIG mesh is that they are more optimised for use on battery powered devices.
We hope to be supplying beacons with Bluetooth SIG mesh, Wirepas and Fruitymesh in the near future as no one solution is suitable for all scenarios.
Read more about Bluetooth mesh on our web site.